Train explosion

jallard

All my prayers to the citizens of Lac-Megantic and thank to the firefighters who came from Maine to help. This is a very sad day in Quebec.

Jason P

Holy cow! Just saw the destruction photos.

:(

Looks like multiple people involved created a cascade of mistakes. Sound like the rail cars were parked up the hill, one engine was running to power the air breaks, it caught fire, the FD showed up and put the fire out and shut the engine down. The air breaks lost pressure and the whole line went down hill picking up speed before launching into the middle of that town.

Up to 50 people could be dead. Just having a beer at the local bar and that's it.

brianlux

Yeah, looks terrible. My thoughts go out to the people of Lac-Megantic.

This and the plane crash at SFO that killed 2 seen here:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/san-francisco- ... d=19598352

There a saying that these things happen in threes and having grown up in an airline family I can say that is very often true- including instances where the three were sometimes combinations of plane and train crashes. I haven't flown since the late 1980's after having one too many airplane crash dreams and having been in two close calls myself. (This cat only has so many lives.) The irony is that planes and trains are much safer than cars. Especially when they are being attended to.

Jason P

brianlux wrote:

Ye
This and the plane crash at SFO that killed 2 seen here:

Crazy thing is that ten people died in a plane crash this weekend also but it hardly got a peep in the news. It happened in Alaska so I guess we take it in stride because everyone is aware of that risk but Boing 777 are not supposed to crash.

Funny how we are wired. I guess it's the same with our attention to a school shooting versus gang violence.

brianlux

Jason P wrote:

brianlux wrote:

Ye
This and the plane crash at SFO that killed 2 seen here:

Crazy thing is that ten people died in a plane crash this weekend also but it hardly got a peep in the news. It happened in Alaska so I guess we take it in stride because everyone is aware of that risk but Boing 777 are not supposed to crash.

Funny how we are wired. I guess it's the same with our attention to a school shooting versus gang violence.

It makes sense that we in Northern California heard more about the SFO crash than the Alaska but I wasn't aware that the same was true elsewhere. That is strange. I guess burning 777's make for better video clips. And as Brian Eno once said, "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More".

Interesting perspective on school shooting vs gang violence although I suppose that is because school shootings generally involve children where as gangs usually involve young adults and up... but I get what you're saying. And of course all of this is media driven/biased.

jallard

Quebec provincial police started a criminal investigation. Now a political debate has started: are transportation laws and inspectors enough? Some try to legetimate the pipeline project with it. Others ask why shouldn't we get rid of our need for oil.

brianlux

jallard wrote:

Quebec provincial police started a criminal investigation. Now a political debate has started: are transportation laws and inspectors enough? Some try to legetimate the pipeline project with it. Others ask why shouldn't we get rid of our need for oil.

I was thinking of Keystone XL while reading this but hesitant to bring it up for concern that I might sound like I'm capitalizing on tragedy as a way of pushing an environmental agenda. But this has been a major concern all along and I really do think it bears consideration. That and the fact that the state department doesn't even know what the exact route of the XL pipeline would be if given the ok:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/09

The State Department's decision to hand over control to the oil industry to evaluate its own environmental performance on the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has led to a colossal oversight.

Neither Secretary of State John Kerry nor President Barack Obama could tell you the exact route that the pipeline would travel through countless neighborhoods, farms, waterways and scenic areas between Alberta's tar sands and oil refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

A letter from the State Department denying an information request to a California man confirms that the exact route of the Keystone XL export pipeline remains a mystery, as DeSmog recently revealed.

Generic maps exist on both the State Department and TransCanada websites, but maps with precise GIS data remain the proprietary information of TransCanada and its chosen oil industry contractors.

Thomas Bachand, a San Francisco-based photographer, author, and web developer discovered this the hard way. A year and a half after he first filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking the GIS data for his Keystone Mapping Project, Mr. Bachand received a troubling response from the State Department denying his request.

In the letter, the State Department admits that it doesn't have any idea about the exact pipeline route - and that it never asked for the basic mapping data to evaluate the potential impacts of the pipeline.

Where will KXL intersect rivers or cross ponds that provide drinking water? What prized hunting grounds and fishing holes might be ruined by a spill? How can communities prepare for possible incidents?

The U.S. State Department seems confident in letting the tar sands industry - led in this instance by TransCanada, whose notorious track record with Keystone 1 includes more than a dozen spills in its first year of operation - place its pipeline wherever it wishes.

"[State] does not have copies of records responsive to your request because the Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone pipeline project was created by Cardno ENTRIX under a contract financed by TransCanada Keystone Pipeline LP, and not the U.S. government," reads the State Department's letter denying Bachand's information request.

"Neither Cardno ENTRIX nor TransCanada ever submitted GIS information to the Department of State, nor was either corporation required to do so. The information that you request, if it exists, is therefore neither physically nor constructively under the control of the Department of State and we are therefore unable to comply with your FOIA request."

As Mr. Bachand pointed out in a July 3 blog post: "Without this digital mapping information, the Keystone XL’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) are incomplete and cannot be evaluated for environmental impacts."

jallard

I don't think you are capitalizing. We have to reply to those who try to force us into THEIR free market. If we are unable to know what's going on on our own land what else are they hiding so they can make more profit on our expense?

jallard

Turns out this a story about the "holy" free market. This is a story about an industry that supposedly auto-regulate itself. They set the safety rules of transportation, of oil transportation. Of course, these rules must not interfere with the making profit rules. Wagons weren't suited for oil transportation, there wasn't an employee of the rail company near by when the train ran away, the train wasn't parked on the side track when the employee left. All this for what? To increase productivity. Only that. Nothing else. Now 50 persons are dead, half a town is destroyed but they are still making profit. What are we waiting for to set OUR rules?

even flow - question mark

Who the fuck did the MMA send in for the press conference, Jimmy Stewart? What a moron! "If you are tired enough, you'll sleep." Yeah that's right brother the town you live in didn't just go up in a huge explosion and you know almost all the people missing. "One conductor has less a chance of being distracted then if there are two on board." Beeeeeecause two people going over the breaking procedures would not be better then one tired person, who can't wait to get off of their shift.

I'm glad that the town's mayor is asking for the campers to come back and visit, just to try and bring about normality to an awful situation.

Feeling for the town and the people of Lac-Megantic.

jallard

even flow - question mark wrote:

Who the fuck did the MMA send in for the press conference, Jimmy Stewart? What a moron! "If you are tired enough, you'll sleep." Yeah that's right brother the town you live in didn't just go up in a huge explosion and you know almost all the people missing. "One conductor has less a chance of being distracted then if there are two on board." Beeeeeecause two people going over the breaking procedures would not be better then one tired person, who can't wait to get off of their shift.

I'm glad that the town's mayor is asking for the campers to come back and visit, just to try and bring about normality to an awful situation.

Feeling for the town and the people of Lac-Megantic.

Here is an interesting article from The Guardian on the subject: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/t ... 3/jul/11/1

even flow - question mark

jallard wrote:

even flow - question mark wrote:

Who the fuck did the MMA send in for the press conference, Jimmy Stewart? What a moron! "If you are tired enough, you'll sleep." Yeah that's right brother the town you live in didn't just go up in a huge explosion and you know almost all the people missing. "One conductor has less a chance of being distracted then if there are two on board." Beeeeeecause two people going over the breaking procedures would not be better then one tired person, who can't wait to get off of their shift.

I'm glad that the town's mayor is asking for the campers to come back and visit, just to try and bring about normality to an awful situation.

Feeling for the town and the people of Lac-Megantic.

Here is an interesting article from The Guardian on the subject: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/t ... 3/jul/11/1

Thanks for the read. Nothing like letting thieves regulate themselves.

lukin2006

tragic ... looks like human error might be at fault.

jallard

https://twitter.com/Martin_Lukacs/statu ... 32/photo/1

Jason P

It makes sense that you would have a conductor and an engineer. Bring back the caboose too.

brianlux

Jason P wrote:

It makes sense that you would have a conductor and an engineer. Bring back the caboose too.

Yes!

tvismyfriend

even flow - question mark wrote:

Who the fuck did the MMA send in for the press conference, Jimmy Stewart? What a moron! "If you are tired enough, you'll sleep." Yeah that's right brother the town you live in didn't just go up in a huge explosion and you know almost all the people missing. "One conductor has less a chance of being distracted then if there are two on board." Beeeeeecause two people going over the breaking procedures would not be better then one tired person, who can't wait to get off of their shift.

I'm glad that the town's mayor is asking for the campers to come back and visit, just to try and bring about normality to an awful situation.

Feeling for the town and the people of Lac-Megantic.

I don't think having a second guy there to go over braking procedures would've made a difference. When cars are attached to a running engine you don't have to put on as many handbrakes.

Jason P

It hasn't been a good month for mass transit.

50 dead in the Canada train derailment
78 dead in the Spain derailment
38 dead in Italy bus crash
3 dead in Indianapolis bus crash

And now there are reports coming in of two passenger trains colliding in Switzerland!

:?